What you are doing is effectively recreating the VRFY command that nearly every major mail hosting service has removed for privacy and abuse reasons. You are opening yourself up to a huge liability, since spammers will quickly use stolen credit cards to crosscheck their lists against your API.
This will cause you to have processing issues from Stripe. This will cause you to have a huge backlash from hosting providers as you desperately try to make sure that your cached address is still valid. (Let's fire off 1000 calls to some random Postfix server, WCGW?) This will cause you to produce false results for domains that run catch-all addresses but don't advertise mailboxes. This will cause you to unwittingly become an effective tool in a spammer's repertoire.
Look, sticking a cache in front of the RCPT TO command is all well and good, but that functionality should be up to the owner of the mail server that you're bombarding, and not up to some third party. You are putting the onus of "hey, just contact us if you don't want us to hit your mail server" on every single mail server admin. This is not okay. SMTP servers aren't nearly as robust, and cannot handle a quickly-spiraling-out-of-control web service hitting them.
In the unlikely event that all our servers are graylisted at the same time, the API might be down. Within a few minutes, our automated system will create new servers elsewhere."
I just threw up a bit in my mouth. I guess the weekend project is to spin up an automated abuse reporting service for requests made from Anymail's virtual machine farm. I'm sure AWS would be pleased to hear they're running command and control for a botnet.
Do not abuse the commons for profit.
Since this is going to get shut down for abuse, it's not exactly passive.
(1) Address harvesting and dictionary attacks (A) In general It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission, to a protected computer, of a commercial electronic mail message that is unlawful under subsection (a), or to assist in the origination of such message through the provision or selection of addresses to which the message will be transmitted, if such person had actual knowledge, or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances, that— (i) the electronic mail address of the recipient was obtained using an automated means from an Internet website or proprietary online service operated by another person, and such website or online service included, at the time the address was obtained, a notice stating that the operator of such website or online service will not give, sell, or otherwise transfer addresses maintained by such website or online service to any other party for the purposes of initiating, or enabling others to initiate, electronic mail messages; or (ii) the electronic mail address of the recipient was obtained using an automated means that generates possible electronic mail addresses by combining names, letters, or numbers into numerous permutations.
Anymail finder uses many approaches to find emails—it searches billions of web pages and performs direct server validation.
The original SMTP spec allows for email address validation, and there are tricks like opening an SMTP connection to a mail server and dropping it half way if the address is verified -- but these are the same "tricks" that spammers use, so many mail servers disable or report false positives. There's a reason why most lead services have a high price: they have actually verified an email address.
Next, sending cold emails to business is OK (sometimes annoying but legally ok), but the copy on makesmail.com has a broken link (1) and doesn't clearly describe how to cold email and be legally compliant. From the horses mouth: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can...
Regardless, congratulations on building up to $1,500 MRR, that is a milestone most side projects never reach!
Most people that are getting email addresses in this way are using it as a cheaper and more effective alternative to LinkedIn inmail, cold emails and cold calls are a great way to sell and if you do it right the recipient of the comms doesn't even care that you harvested their details.
Doing it right means the message is very targeted, and most of the time you have people or companies in common with the person you're reaching out to.
Compu-Finder got a $1.1M fine: http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=944159
Seriously, if you're not swayed by the ethical considerations and all the other commenters here pointing out how scummy and immoral your business is, at least consider the liability questions. You're in pretty flagrant violation of the CAN SPAM Act and could be looking at very large fines.
Turn it off.
This should be a monthly service, full stop. You mention users use it once, and then not for a while. That is the best possible scenario for a recurring revenue business. You should stop offering one-off purchases immediately if you want to see revenue grow.
I can think off the top of my head of a few 'ongoing' value adds you could do; in particular, you could remember emails you couldn't find, and if you do find them notify the user. There are probably more things you could imagine if you were closer to the business.
This would also let you charge spammers a lot, or preferably just keep them out and stay more moral by just capping the monthly requests at something reasonable for a human, not a spammer.
What the usage-based pricing model does, it helps you capture startup customers early on when they are pre-revenue, then you get to keep them as they grow.
It's difficult to imagine how anyone using this service is not violating the CAN-SPAM Act[1].
Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email.
It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic
mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement
or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that
promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for
business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message
to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law.
Effectively, this service is a facilitating violation of the law.
Penalties can be up to $16,000 USD per unsolicited email sent.
Just ask Papa John's how much unsolicited messages can cost you[2].
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can...
[2] https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news...
Ya, they sent text messages, so they skirted that issue, but the CAN-SPAM Act fines are very real - and the point I was making is that Papa Johns essentially had to pay out through the nose for sending unsolicited messages.
> And there has never been a case (that I've seen, and I follow this stuff pretty closely because I really dislike receiving newsletters, personally) prosecuting anyone for sending a cold sales email.
People get fined all the time. Just because the likelihood of not being fined is pretty good, doesn't mean they aren't violating CAN-SPAM. Most people just mark the email as spam and move on - people have to report it to the FCC for them to get fined.
That sounds like SMTP VRFY, which doesn't work since it's disabled by every competent devops person.
[1] (My favorite) https://growthhackers.com/slides/30-brilliant-growth-hack-ca... [2] https://medium.com/@clavain [3] https://growthhackers.com/members/kullar/posts
shakes head
It's no longer a side-business, and $1500/mo is not enough to sustain two partners.
Then, he partnered up with the guy from Anymailfinder.
If you cold email me with your business/sales/whatever you make money with it pitch, I report you to your hosting provider and if necessary, to the local authorities.
http://www.selligent.com/blog/inspiration/think-differently-...
While soliciting them with offers or advertising, yes. Anything other than that would be sheer lunacy, frankly.
I really wish the marketing cycle was reversed, where I post what I'm looking for and businesses respond with offers, because when I'm looking to buy something I would love to be shown options and offered discounts.
A button saying "Get email" to me would indicate that I would be sent email if I clicked, not that I would be shown the email address of the person the button was associated with, for example.
Skip your blog posts. Skip your viral marketing videos. Skip your media blitz. Find your customers. Find their emails (yes, using services like LeadGenius) and just simply ask them.
What would be the alternative?
The absolute wrong way to gain customers is to blast lists out to purchased people in a "hammer" fashion vs targeted / personalized informational content pieces.
Your idea on:
Find their emails (yes, using services like LeadGenius) and just simply ask them.
Is fantastic, but this service is being used for lead validation/spam.
If people want actual email addresses, they can typically online google search, or use data.com (formerly JigSaw).
Most larger companies don't do demand generation well, and I think many people on here don't see an issue of batch/blasting for "lead gen".
I'm in Marketing Automation for a living and deal with CANSPAM/compliance quite a bit day to day.
The alternatives are numerous. Adwords, Facebook advertising, LinkedIn ads, running ad campaigns on targeted websites, etc. I saw one a story about one guy that was acutally able to specifically target a single person at a specific company he wanted using LinkedIn ads [1].
[1] http://thehustle.co/the-linkedin-hack-that-made-me-120000
That is considered illegal spam in lots of european countries unless you have a pre-existing relation ship with the recipients. YMMV.
The alternative to finding potential customers is to find where they hang out, then go there and inform them that you exist. If they really want/need your service, they will come to you. Once they do, that's when you get that contact info and politely but persistently pound it.
A more extreme example: if a hustler approaches me on the street and tries to con me, is that still "cold outreach"?
To me if it's on that spectrum it's all sleazy, only to varying degrees. At least with blog posts and viral videos it's always my choice to engage with them.
I run large scale advertising campaigns. I wish that it was cheaper than hiring an SDR to cold email. It simply isn't. In the very early days, advertising is so expensive that it makes almost no sense to prefer it over cold emails. Cold emailing simply works, as much as it might irritate you
I have to answer, because the sales people will keep mailing every week otherwise, and marking as spam reduces the quality of the spam filter rules.
I'm the kind of person who will use inbound information if I'm actually looking to solve a problem, and I will resent your wasting my time if you go outbound at me. You literally end up on a "prefer not to do business with" list, hurting yourself.
Meanwhile, enough people apparently can't research their own problems enough, that cold marketing works. I just can't really understand why that is.
Edit: Check my posts - I am talking about Europe not the US. Cold emails are against UWG in Germany.
That doesn't make the time dealing with it any less of a waste or make spamming any more ethical or socially acceptable just because it's a professional contact, of course.
I think it's beyond helpful; it's doing a great service. Thoughtful, highly targeted cold outreach is just that.
> They are a YC company.
While HN is offered by YC, being a YC company does not mean getting favorable reception by the community on HN.
So LeadGenius being a YC company and Anymailfinder getting poor reception on HN doesn't demonstrate any kind of inconsistency.
They got 138 points on their launch and lots of positive comments. Then they received $18 million. I'd say that's pretty positive reception in the Valley.
Points on a HN news article aren't the same as votes in favor of the company by the HN community (heck, this one on Anymailfinder has 49 points currently; if points were a measure, Anymailfinder would be getting a positive response, rather than the negative one complained of to launch this subthread.)
> Then they received $18 million.
Not from HN.
> I'd say that's pretty positive reception in the Valley.
Reception by the HN community isn't the same thing as reception in the Valley.